Chuck Sweeny: Insightful and inciteful word maestro

For 37 years Sweeny has been a newspaper man who has delivered deep paper cuts to bureaucrats and elected officials as he railed against and rallied for policies and causes affecting the region.

Sweeny, 65, senior editor at the Rockford Register Star, is the chief stirrer of the Rock River Valley’s pot. His columns provide a glimpse into an insightful and inciteful word maestro who, like the wry piano player he is, channels pop sensibility and edgy messages into “hell, yeah” or “no way” moments for bleary-eyed, caffeinating readers.

His morning missives leave readers with something to ponder after he fillets, dissects or skewers events, issues and leaders, all the while protecting his leanings like a poker hand. His morning soliloquies create informed moments for friends, foes and readers.

But like journalism jazz, Sweeny’s riffs leave readers wondering just what his politics really are.

“A lot of people try to pin him down political and you can’t do it,” says John Bishoff, who has played guitar in at least four rock bands with Sweeny since 1967. “He won’t let you.”

“He’s kind of an enigma,” said Brad Long, president of the Northwestern Illinois Building & Construction Trades Council, which represents 15,000 union members in eight counties. “Sometimes it’s hard to say what side of the fence he’s on. Is he a Republican? A Democrat? I couldn’t tell you.”

“It is ridiculous to peg Chuck though countless have tried pinning labels on this man: conservative, liberal, racist, misogynist, and the assorted crazy-as-a-loon variations,” said Linda Grist Cunningham, former executive editor of the Register Star. “I heard from hundreds of disgruntled readers, politicos and coworkers as they attempted to wedge Chuck into a neat package. Waste of time.”

Cunningham says Sweeny is simply a power broker.

“The Rock River Valley’s most powerful, actually,” said Cunningham, who retired in 2011 to Florida after 20 years in the News Tower. “He wields his power with a compassionate community memory that spans decades of movers-and-shakers, most faded from the news cycles with little more than a whisper and a couple of cuckoo ideas.”

Sweeny, Cunningham said, knows where the skeletons are. Co-workers say he’s an institution because of his tenure and knowledge.

His father was stationed in England during World War II and married an English war bride. Sweeny graduated in 1966 from Auburn High School and in 1972 from the University of Illinois at Chicago with a degree in political science. Then he came back home, where he married Cherene. They adopted two children, Stephanie and Jimmy.

Dave Lindberg, who ran the Northern Illinois Law Enforcement Commission, hired him to work as a juvenile-justice planner. He said Sweeny learned quickly how to navigate a 12-member board that oversaw the commission. They were Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives and all persuasions in between, and each saw the world through political eyes.

“To survive, you basically had to make sure you rode the fence on politics,” said Lindberg, assistant operations manager at Chicago Rockford International Airport.

Sweeny worked for North Central Associated Publishers in Durand for several years, joining the Rockford Register Star in 1984 as a government reporter. He was city editor before covering politics.

“He’s very incisive,” said Don Manzullo, a former 10-term GOP congressman from Egan. “He gets inside the story. He’s not content with superlatives or hyperbole. He wants to know exactly what’s going on.”

Manzullo said Sweeny never went for “gotcha” moments during interviews but asked for clarification if something didn’t come out right.

“He has too much integrity. His goal has always been to be fair. I cannot think of anything he wrote about me that was not true.”

If there are issues with a story, Sweeny will revisit them.

Long, the union boss, said Sweeny’s columns have at times agitated him. One column on building trades starting an outreach program left him feeling that the program was being shown in a bad light.

After stewing for a week, Long talked with Sweeny and unleashed a 15-minute rant. “Then he says, ‘You’re right, I should have called you’.”

In May 2013, Sweeny wrote this: “Brad Long, president of the Northwestern Illinois Building and Construction Trades Council, says I have the wrong impression of the 17 building trades. They’re making a strong effort to diversify the workforce — particularly the future workforce — out there in Constructionland.

“Very well, then. As Paul Harvey used to say, here is ‘the rest of the story’.”